But I hear someone say, "Do you mean to tell me that those three little
verses that bring the tears to your eyes, will bring them also to mine and
my neighbor's? I might listen to them appreciatively but dry-eyed; my
neighbor might not care for them enough to re-read them once. All about us
we see this personal equation in the appreciation of literature. Unless
you are prepared, then, to maintain that literature may be good for one
and bad for another, your contention will scarcely hold water."

Even so, brother. The messenger who told me of the safety of my dear one
did not thrill your heart as he did mine. She was dear to me, not to you,
and the infinitely delicate yet powerful chain of conditions and relations
that operated between the messenger's voice and my emotional nature did
not connect him with yours. Assuredly, the message that reaches one man
may not reach another. It may even reach a man in his youth and fall short
in manhood, or vice versa. It may be good for him and inoperative on all
the rest of the world. We estimate literature, it is true, by the
universality of its appeal or by the character of the persons whom alone
that appeal reaches. The message of literature as art may thus be to the
crowd or to a select few. I could even imagine intellect and feeling of
such exquisite fineness, such acknowledged superiority, that appeal to it
alone might be enough to fix the status of a work of art, though it might
leave all others cold. Still, in general I believe, that the greatest
literature appeals to the greatest number and to the largest number of
types. I believe that there are very few persons to whom Shakespeare,
properly presented, will not appeal. In him, nevertheless, the learned and
those of taste also delight. There are authors like Walter Pater who are a
joy to the few but do not please the many. There are others galore, whom
perhaps it would be invidious to name, who inspire joy in the multitude
but only distaste in the more discriminating. We place Pater above these,
just as we should always put quality above quantity; but I place